Best Note Apps for Students: Which Work on Every Device Free?

Students need two different apps and often buy one. Handwritten lecture notes and PDF slides want a pen app on a tablet. Essays, research, reading notes and everything typed want an app that is on your phone, your laptop and the library computer. Here is the field as of November 1, 2026, with prices read from each vendor's pricing page or store listing.

The comparison

| App | Free plan | Student-relevant paid price | Handwriting and PDF | Works on | Best for | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | Goodnotes | 3 files, 20 min audio | Essential $11.99/yr; Pro $35.99/yr; free Education plan via schools | Excellent | Apple, Android, Windows, web | Pen notes, annotated slides | | Notability | Starter: 5 notes | Lite $11.99/yr; Plus $15.99/yr; Pro $79.99/yr | Excellent, audio synced to ink | Apple (iPad, iPhone, Mac) | Lecture recording plus handwriting | | Microsoft OneNote | Everything | Free; storage via Microsoft 365 | Good ink on Surface | Everywhere | Typed notes, free, shared class notebooks | | Notion | Free personal plan | Plus and AI plans | None | Web, desktop, mobile | Project and planner pages | | Google Keep | Everything | Free | No | Web, Android, iOS | Quick lists and reminders | | Obsidian | Free personal | Sync add-on | Limited | Desktop and mobile via your own sync | Linked research notes | | Evernote | 50 notes, 1 device | Starter about $99/yr | Limited | Everywhere | Legacy users | | Noteshik | 60 notes, folders, tags, voice-to-text, offline | Pro $3.99/mo or $24.99/yr; Premium $8.99/mo or $54.99/yr | No | Web, Windows, macOS, Google Play, Amazon Fire | Typed notes with AI summaries across devices |

The pen app question

If you take notes by hand on an iPad, the choice is Goodnotes or Notability. Goodnotes Essential at $11.99 a year covers one device without a watermark; Pro at $35.99 adds sync across devices and collaboration. Ask your school about the free Education plan before paying. Notability's Plus plan is $15.99 a year and its signature feature is audio that stays linked to your ink, so you can tap a word and hear what the lecturer was saying. Notability is Apple-only; Goodnotes also runs on Android, Windows and the web.

The typed-notes question

OneNote is the free default and plenty of courses hand out class notebooks in it. It works everywhere and costs nothing. Its weak spots are a heavy interface and search that slows down in big notebooks.

Noteshik is the lighter option built for the same job: typed and voice notes with folders, notebooks and tags, offline on every platform, encrypted at rest and in transit. The free plan holds 60 notes. Pro at $24.99 a year (or $3.99 a month) adds unlimited notes plus the AI tools students actually use: summarize a reading, ask a question across your notes, and auto-tag. It imports Evernote (.enex), Notion, Obsidian, Joplin and Markdown, so switching mid-semester is one upload. The Web Clipper saves articles and PDFs from the browser.

Notion is excellent for a semester planner and group projects, less good for fast note capture in a lecture, and most pages need a connection on mobile.

Price over a four-year degree

| Setup | Four-year cost | |---|---| | OneNote + Google Keep | $0 | | Goodnotes Essential + OneNote | $47.96 | | Goodnotes Essential + Noteshik Pro | $147.92 | | Notability Plus + Noteshik Pro | $163.92 | | Goodnotes Pro + Evernote Starter | about $540 |

The last row is what a lot of students pay without noticing: a pen app at the top tier plus an Evernote plan that now costs about $99 a year.

A sensible student stack

1. Pen: Goodnotes Essential (or the free Education plan), or Notability Plus if you want synced audio.
2. Typed notes: OneNote if free is the priority, Noteshik if you want AI summaries and a cleaner app for $24.99 a year.
3. Flashcards: Anki, free, and feed it from your summaries.

Related reading

• Goodnotes price 2026: every plan explained
• 7 best free iPad note-taking apps
• Best free note app for Android